Monogatari Series - Volume 31 - Chapter 48

Hitagi Graph

"Ara-ragi-kun. My, my, it's been quite some time since you've shown your face around me. I assumed that you had been stabbed to death in an alley somewhere, so I'm quite surprised."

"Don't condense ‘Ara, Araragi-kun’ like that. If anyone is going to do that it should be Hachikuji, not you."

"Is Hachikuji the one who stabbed you?"

"I haven't been stabbed. Well, she stabs me in an emotional sense. No, if I were to be stabbed to death in an alley the culprit would be you. In fact I've already prepared for just such a scenario by preparing at least five ways to leave a dying message that indicates you as the killer."

"Well that's not good. So in order to stop you from leaving a dying message, I'll need to remove all of your fingers before killing you."

"At that point it becomes a message from the killer to the rest of the world. It's surprising to me that you're still appearing in mass-published magazines. I think you'd be more suited to kasutori magazines, Senjougahara Hitagi."

"As a gravure model."

"I was thinking more as a 'too bizarre to be real' photo model."

"But if Risuka-san and Kizutaka-kun can be in mass-published magazines, then I don't see why I should be banned from being in them."

"Throwing together a combination like that makes for quite the example. A long time ago I did a collaboration with Risuka-chan, but it turned out to be a rather controversial work."

"I'm sure that was Araragi-kun's fault."

"Does the fault lie with my weakness or does the fault lie with Risuka-chan for being too cute?"

"Your entire existence is a fault. A serious crime. Oh, and when I say 'serious crime' it's foreshadowing."

"I don't like that foreshadowing."

"Oh yes, and speaking of Risuka-chan, in the recently-released Bessatsu Shonen Magazine February 2022 issue in chapter 10, Risuka-chan is very cute when she talks about how her breasts are getting bigger and how it's troubling her."

"I've read it. Repeatedly."

"I'm continuing my own diet as well. Unlike Araragi-kun, I can't just pluck and scrape off my excess flesh."

"I haven't done something so befitting of being in a 'too bizarre to be real' photograph."

"Dieting for me is my fight against Araragi-kun."

"So it's not a fight against yourself?"

"I've never disliked exercising, so for me dieting isn't a painful experience. But when I see a person like Araragi-kun who comes from one of those wealthy families that all have their slim and stylish figures, I feel greatly overfed, um, I mean, I feel greatly fed up."

"A person from a wealthy family...?"

"Oh, right, you're only half-human, so you're half of a person."

"I think you've managed to be even more offensive."

"Worthless human being?"

"Please stop."

"So I enjoy exercising, but I also enjoy eating. It's a lot like the character Tsunagi-san who appears in the recently-released Bessatsu Shonen Magazine February 2022 issue in chapter 10."

"Did you come here to advertise? You're not a magical girl. More like a criminal girl."

"Who are you calling a criminal? I haven’t violated any laws, no way, not here or there."

"Wait, here or there meaning?"

"But you know, I'm a good representation of 'honorable poverty,' aren't I?"

"I think you're putting a good spin on things, but I don't think that I can call you out on it since I am, after all, a worthless human being from a wealthy family."

"Overseas, the poorer a person is, the more likely they are to be fat, I hear. What an awful thing. It makes me want to start a revolution. But in the end, dieting requires daily effort to avoid rebounding. To that end, a person has to weigh themselves every day and record it. That's the most basic step. You should, how to say it... graph it."

"Graph."

"When I say graph, I am not talking about the Touzai Graph where Niki-san published articles."

"What current high school student who is relying on math to get through entrance exams would possibly make that logical leap? Even if you say the name Niki-san to me, I'm not sure who you're talking about."

"Kaibara-sensei's transition is often talked about, but I am paying attention to Niki-san's transition as well. I can empathize so much with Kurita-san's rise into the position of being a rival character that I'd like to have a graph of it. I can't get enough of her descent into darkness."

"I don't think that they used the phrase 'descent into darkness' in that time period. And you certainly do like eating. After all, you just casually referred to Kaibara Yuuzan as 'Kaibara-sensei'."

"We were talking about the Touzai Graph?"

"No. We were talking about line graphs. It would be a line graph, wouldn't it? A dieting log?"

"Yes. It's not a pie graph like what I used when I did a survey on how people feel about you, Araragi-kun."

"Does such a graph really exist? I'm not sure how that would work. Part of me wants to see it, and part of me doesn't want to..."

"Like was 2%, hate was 2%, and I don't care came in at 96%. There were no other responses."

"I didn't want to see it! It could have at least been hate at 96%."

"Indeed. I submitted an answer to the survey as well."

"Which did you answer? I'm not sure how I feel about that 'no other responses' part either."

"Proper diet and exercise will of course lead to good health, but at some point your line graph would stop having ups and downs and just become a straight line. Like a heart monitor."

"The person in your comparison is dead. Not from starvation, I assume. Are you talking about plateaus?"

"Perhaps not in the sense of stagnation. But I suppose that, for that person, maybe that point is where they found a balance that indicates it's their ideal weight."

"Then isn't that good enough? Isn't that the final goal of dieting? To maintain your ideal weight."

"But what if we compare it to something else. Let's say that for Araragi-kun the 'ideal test score' is 50 points. Would you be satisfied with having reached that?"

"Who has an ideal score of 50? And don't phrase it as if your beloved lover worked really really hard just to achieve the average."

"My ideal weight is 50 kilograms, and that doesn't make sense. Just like limiting food intake doesn't make sense."

"So now you're just outright saying your weight."

"Now that I am suffering under it personally, I have come to realize just how damaging it is that women cannot talk about their weight. Having to hide your own weight in such a manner is like saying ‘this is something that must be concealed’, which implies that ‘this is something bad’. It creates a taboo and makes a person reject a part of themselves and have low self-esteem. Look, I have a high IQ, so I also have a high weight."

"Don't interweave this with your own self-masochism. Is this an interwoven graph? That would be a violently fluctuating graph for sure. Don't put such highs and lows on your self-esteem. Also, you’re tall; isn’t that the real reason you’re heavy?"

"Still, if I explicitly state my weight I want to be told that I'm slim."

"So we’re bound by these social norms all the same, huh."

"At this point I can't help but think fondly of back when the Crab of Weight made me weigh a mere 5 kilograms. I only weighed one tenth of what I weigh now. Imagine the shift on the line graph from that change?"

"It would be almost a perfect right angle."

"Maybe I should see if I can go back to that. I'll ask the crab."

"'Danger past, God forgotten'. You're scaring me with that kind of talk. It wasn't that carefree of an episode, was it? Your Crab of Weight. It was deadly serious. It was so deadly serious that just calling it 'deadly serious' seems like an understatement. Remember what it was like? You only weighed 5 kilograms, so you had to hide your weight from everyone around you. You had to go to such extreme measures to conceal your weight that you didn't interact with anyone and spent two years all alone."

"Maybe if I play up those memories of that period with the Crab of Weight it will help me with my dieting."

"I know it's hypocritical for me to say this with how much I abuse my vampire physiology, but don't even joke about that. The crab would foam at the mouth and fall over."

"I want to be a magical girl who can magically control her weight."

"A magical girl born from a societal-pressure-induced weight complex."

"Just as Araragi-kun took on immortality traits from Shinobu-san, I can have the power to remove weight just like the crab. Using my special crab pincer."

"In that situation the pincer would be used to take weight from others."

"I want that. The Crab of Weight's 'mass-deprivation ability'."

"Don't try to make it sound cool. Don't call body weight 'mass'."

"What. You can't even explain the difference between mass and weight."

"I would like to say 'of course I can explain that', but I'm not sure if I can explain it sufficiently to a person who is insurmountably smarter than me. If I start trying to give a lecture with my patchwork knowledge, I’d quickly be intellectually outweighed."

"What? Did you just compare my mass to that of a mountain? Are you saying that you have a mountain of things to say about me and my weight?"

"Oh no, she's having victim delusions."

"Maybe I'll use the Crab of Weight's 'thought-deprivation ability' to make you forget my weight."

"Don't learn to use such a thing. Thought-deprivation? How scary... Maybe the first aberration to appear was the strongest after all. I couldn't have fought that for two years."

"I guess a more accurate name would be memory-deprivation ability."

"That sounds scary too... But even if you had the mass-deprivation ability, in the case of what the Crab of Weight did, it changed your weight but had zero effect on your figure, right? Even if your memories were taken, chunks of your brain were not removed from your head."

"Oh. I didn't consider that. You're right that no matter how much weight I may gain, if I had three-sizes like Hanekawa it would be perfectly fine."

"Don't just casually imply that Hanekawa weighs a lot."

"This is a girls’ fight. You might also call it a girls’ night."

"Those aren't the same thing at all. Aren't you the one having a descent into darkness? If you want to change your figure, then I've heard it's better to take full-body photos every day and compare them instead of making a line graph."

"I see. Now that would be a Hitagi Graph. How surprising. It wasn't the mention of crime that was foreshadowing, but instead it was the reference to the Touzai Graph."

"The Touzai Graph was only referenced because you wanted to reference it. But OK, OK. Well perhaps Hanekawa is self-conscious about her own figure, in which case I would be happy to act as a photographer to help her do a self-esteem-boosting swimsuit gravure photoshoot."

"When that happens I'll publish you in the Hitagi Graph."

"Bikini Hanekawa?"

"Don't say it like 'Black Hanekawa'. And I was obviously talking about publishing the 'too bizarre to be real' photograph of Araragi-kun stabbed to death with the point of a line graph in a back alley. Turns out we didn’t fulfill any foreshadowing after all, instead we only filled a body bag."

"Put your back to the bottom of the ship and be flooded with righteousness."

"Your dying message isn't very good."

"If you said that to me after I'd died, my heart would be more broken than the line graph of my EKG."